Journey with Della

Chills and tears. Then more chills and more tears. Then pain and hurt like the human mind is incapable of describing. I thought, someone must have heard wrong. There was no way that a 4 month old sleeping baby could have been shot four times in the heard despite the mom’s desperate plea.

Then they said there was a video and someone offered to share it with me.

No! I screamed. Please don’t share that video with me. I am incapable of viewing such images and remaining the same. I would be forever changed, in the wrong way. Already, I have the hardest time wrapping my mind around such a despicable evil. How can it be that we, human beings, could ever stoop so low? A baby? In its sleep?

To the mother (and family) of the sweet little baby:

I know you are hurting but I can’t pretend that I understand what you are going through. You baby was snatched away by the worst kind of evil that the human heart is capable of. You must be grieving right not. You are probably numb, in denial, confused, angry, asking God why, and refusing to wake up to another day without your baby. While I have no clue what that must feel like, please understand that it is normal to grief.

Give yourself permission to feel all the emotions that come with the enormous loss and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t let anyone use Bible verses to kick you out of your grief before it has run its full course because that would leave you not ok for a very long time to come. You have suffered the kind of trauma whose impact, like the rings of an onion is multilayered. It will trigger other things in your life and unleash waves of emotion and suffering you never imagined possible.

Whatever you do, please give yourself permission to grief. It will come in waves so don’t be surprised if you are doing better one day and worse the next. Each wave will show up unannounced but leave you broken but put together only if you let it.

To the man who pulled that trigger:

I do not know you, but your actions have hurt us more than you will ever know. I am not sure what possessed you, and quite frankly, I don’t care. As the full grown man that you are, you should have enough sense to know that your actions have consequences, on you and on others. In this circle of life, if you are big enough to not only know what a gun it but learn to use one, you ought to be bigger in your decision making aptitude.

Given the realities of our time in our fatherland, I know that you have a story. I know that something about your story led you to make that choice in that moment. You see, I am angry and I don’t know that I will be ok. But I am trying hard to understand why you did what you did. Is it senseless? Yes! Is it barbaric? By all means! But you have a story and I want to hear it because whether I like it or not, we are all connected in this big circle of life. You affect me, so help me know you.

To the powers that be:

When shall enough be enough? How many mothers have to experience this kind of pain before you do what you must? When shall you rise to the dictates of the average human conscience and bring justice to such injustices in our nation? Do you even care that we are on a slippery slope that only gets slipperier with each passing day? Have you indeed lost all confidence in your own humanity?

Human rights activists will certainly come after you demanding justice but waiting until then is a mockery to us as a people. There have been many before this one – North, Kumbo, Bambili, Bambui, to name but those that come to mind right now. We have suffered enough humiliation and shame because of your actions and inactions. Now we are numbed and infuriated but without the power that you have, there isn’t much that we can do to ensure that no other children get robbed of their basic right to life.

The ridicule we have suffered is unimaginable. Please don’t add “people from the country where children are massacred” to our collective identity statement. DO THE RIGHT THING! Get justice for this innocent life.

To the church in Cameroon:

We have prayed and will continue to pray but what more can we do? What if it is alright to engage our thinking faculties more deliberately in the face of such evil? What if ours is also a call to be the “Martin Luther”s and “Martin Luther King Jr”s that our nation desperately needs?

What if we devoted as much time and resources to seeking practical solutions to the problems that plague this nation as we do to executing different church projects?
What if we channeled the finances raised in our churches towards building the lives of people (in and out of the church) and not building structures?
What if at the end of the financial year it was alright to report a negative balance on out church account because we went above and beyond in giving of ourselves for the sake of this nation?
What if our silence is, in fact, complicity?
What if this helplessness we feel is supposed to fuel the change our hearts ache for? What if… what if…?